The audio capabilities of modern computer systems have continually increased. For example, many modern computer systems provide ports that allow computer systems to interface with microphones and speakers. Typically, such interfaces are analog. Thus, the microphone port would include a connector, such as a stereo jack. The computer system would receive an analog signal from the microphone via the stereo jack, amplify the signal, and then convert the amplified signal into a digital signal. The digital signal would then be available to application programs, such as audio mixing programs, for further processing. Unfortunately, the pre-amplifiers utilized in many computer systems are of moderate to poor quality. As a result, the signal-to-noise ratio and audio fidelity of the amplified microphone signals are quite low.
In order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and the audio fidelity of microphone signals, devices that are external to the computer system can be utilized to receive microphone signals. After receiving the analog microphone signals, the external devices then amplify and convert, using high-quality pre-amplifiers and analog-to-digital converters, then analog microphone signals into digital signals. The external devices then transmit the digital microphone signals to a computer system via a universal serial bus (“USB”) or a 1394 bus. The signal-to-noise ratio and audio fidelity of the digital microphone signals are relatively high.
Application programs can further process the high fidelity microphone signals. For example, the frequency response of the microphone signals may be varied by tone controls or an equalizer. Also, the dynamic response of the microphone signals may be varied by a single or multi-band compressor. Similarly, the pitch of the digital audio signals may be varied to compensate for out of tune vocals or instruments. Digital microphone signals may even be processed so that the sound appears to originate from a selected location such as behind or in front of a listener.
In order to optimize the above application program processing, the digital microphone signals need to be properly configured. However, different types of microphones often require different adjustments. For example, the frequency response and dynamic response of a Sure SM58 (vocal) microphone is very different from the frequency response of a Sennheiser E605 (drum) microphone. In addition, different microphones of the same type can have different frequency and dynamic responses. For example, the frequency response of one Sure SM58 microphone may be slightly different from the frequency response of another Sure SM58 microphone. As a result, the operator of an audio mixing program, such as an audio engineer, is required to adjust audio channel settings such as frequency response, gain, compression, etc, for each microphone. Such adjustments require a substantial amount of skill and time.
Thus, a need exists to automatically configure audio channel settings so that microphone signals can be more efficiently processed.